What is Dada?

Dada was an avant-garde art movement that emerged around 1916 in Zurich as a reaction against World War I and bourgeois society. Dadaists rejected logic, reason, and traditional aesthetics, embracing absurdity, chance, and anti-art gestures. Key figures included Marcel Duchamp, Hannah Hoch, Hugo Ball, and Hans Arp. Duchamp’s readymades challenged what could be considered art, while Hoch’s photomontages created radical new imagery. Dada directly preceded and influenced Surrealism, with many Dadaists joining the Surrealist movement when Dada dissolved in the early 1920s. While Dada emphasized destruction and negation, Surrealism channeled similar anti-rational energy toward constructive exploration of the unconscious mind.